SCHOOLS 



master can always get made a bishop and an unsuccessful one a dean by 

 going off to the deanery of Wells. He was succeeded by John Burton. 

 The improvement was immediate. Commoners rose from thirty-five .to 

 forty-six in 1727 ; by 1730 they numbered eighty-seven ; in 1732, one 

 hundred and eleven, and in 1734 one hundred and twenty-three. This 

 was high-water mark, never again reached till 1804. The quality of the 

 attendance, or rather the attendance of the quality, improved with the 

 quantity. Both quantity and quality had been as good in the previous 

 century, and these produced the new, now old, school. The increase 

 under Dr. Burton was destined to produce even greater developments in 

 school and school buildings. He seems to have determined to make the 

 increase of numbers permanent, and to secure at least some of the profit 

 to himself by building a new house under his own control for the 

 reception of commoners. So he has been called ' the Founder of Com- 

 moners ' a misleading misnomer. 



When Dr. Burton came to the headmaster's throne, and for some 

 years afterwards, he did not, nor did the commoners proper, live in 

 'Commoners.' They lived in college. 1 In 1724 the college passed a 

 resolution that ' either Dr. Burton or Mr. Eyre shall constantly reside in 

 the College, dividing the time equally between them, so long as Mr. Eyre 

 continues Usher.' Now that Eyre, not Burton, lived outside college 

 seems proved by Eyre's being tenant of the Spital from I72O, 2 while 

 Charles Blackstone in the Benefactions Book records 3 that Burton ' in 

 1727 expended a considerable sum in new buildings in the Schoolmaster's 

 lodgings, and in repairing and ornamenting the old.' In 1727 Philip 

 Yorke, son of Lord Hardwicke, the Chancellor, was asked to advise 

 whether commoners being admitted as headmaster's boarders would 

 subject the college brewhouse to excise duties. He replied in the 

 negative. 



Again from a letter written on 21 October, 1731,* it is clear that 

 the headmaster still lived in college and restricted himself to the statutory 

 ten filii nobilium. 



* You that are in the midst of the Beau Monde and think of nothing 

 but Foreign Dukes, etc., will not be entertained with what I can relate 

 from hence, which only consists of the pleasure of the Field, where last 

 Monday we were particularly well pleased. For by invitation we had 

 Dr. Burton, the Master of Winchester School, and his ten young noble- 

 men's sons that live with him, for which he has 200 a year for each, 

 and is as a private governour to them, and they also have the advantage 

 of a publick school at the same time, which surely must be a fine way 

 of educating them. These with four other young gentlemen of the 

 School met us in the field a-hunting. They and their attendance and 

 ours made in all 40 people, and after very good sport all came home 

 to dine here. Indeed, I have not seen a finer sight than those boys and 



1 Annals, p. 392. " Wykehamtca, p. 465. 3 Ibid. p. 124. 



4 Political and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Miss E. F. D. Osbom 

 (London, 1890), p. 45. 



n 345 44 



